use Text::Balanced qw (
extract_delimited
extract_bracketed
extract_quotelike
extract_codeblock
extract_variable
extract_tagged
extract_multiple
gen_delimited_pat
gen_extract_tagged
);
# Extract the initial substring of $text that is delimited by
# two (unescaped) instances of the first character in $delim.
($extracted, $remainder) = extract_delimited($text,$delim);
# Extract the initial substring of $text that is bracketed
# with a delimiter(s) specified by $delim (where the string
# in $delim contains one or more of '(){}[]<>').
($extracted, $remainder) = extract_bracketed($text,$delim);
# Extract the initial substring of $text that is bounded by
# an XML tag.
($extracted, $remainder) = extract_tagged($text);
# Extract the initial substring of $text that is bounded by
# a C<BEGIN>...C<END> pair. Don't allow nested C<BEGIN> tags
($extracted, $remainder) =
extract_tagged($text,"BEGIN","END",undef,{bad=>["BEGIN"]});
# Extract the initial substring of $text that represents a
# Perl "quote or quote-like operation"
($extracted, $remainder) = extract_quotelike($text);
# Extract the initial substring of $text that represents a block
# of Perl code, bracketed by any of character(s) specified by $delim
# (where the string $delim contains one or more of '(){}[]<>').
($extracted, $remainder) = extract_codeblock($text,$delim);
# Extract the initial substrings of $text that would be extracted by
# one or more sequential applications of the specified functions
# or regular expressions
@extracted = extract_multiple($text,
[ \&extract_bracketed,
\&extract_quotelike,
\&some_other_extractor_sub,
qr/[xyz]*/,
'literal',
]);

# Create a string representing an optimized pattern (a la Friedl) # that matches a substring delimited by any of the specified characters # (in this case: any type of quote or a slash)

$patstring = gen_delimited_pat(q{'"`/});

# Generate a reference to an anonymous sub that is just like extract_tagged # but pre-compiled and optimized for a specific pair of tags, and consequently # much faster (i.e. 3 times faster). It uses qr// for better performance on # repeated calls, so it only works under Perl 5.005 or later.

The various extract_... subroutines may be used to extract a delimited substring, possibly after skipping a specified prefix string. By default, that prefix is optional whitespace (/\s*/), but you can change it to whatever you wish (see below).

The substring to be extracted must appear at the current pos location of the string's variable (or at index zero, if no pos position is defined). In other words, the extract_... subroutines don't extract the first occurrence of a substring anywhere in a string (like an unanchored regex would). Rather, they extract an occurrence of the substring appearing immediately at the current matching position in the string (like a \G-anchored regex would).

The skipped prefix (i.e. the characters before the extracted string). On failure, undef is returned.

Note that in a list context, the contents of the original input text (the first argument) are not modified in any way.

However, if the input text was passed in a variable, that variable's pos value is updated to point at the first character after the extracted text. That means that in a list context the various subroutines can be used much like regular expressions. For example:

In a scalar context, the extracted string is returned, having first been removed from the input text. Thus, the following code also processes each quote-like operation, but actually removes them from $text:

Prefix patterns are matched without any trailing modifiers (/gimsox etc.) This can bite you if you're expecting a prefix specification like '.*?(?=<H1>)' to skip everything up to the first <H1> tag. Such a prefix pattern will only succeed if the <H1> tag is on the current line, since . normally doesn't match newlines.

To overcome this limitation, you need to turn on /s matching within the prefix pattern, using the (?s) directive: '(?s).*?(?=<H1>)'

The extract_delimited function formalizes the common idiom of extracting a single-character-delimited substring from the start of a string. For example, to extract a single-quote delimited string, the following code is typically used:

($remainder = $text) =~ s/\A('(\\.|[^'])*')//s;
$extracted = $1;

but with extract_delimited it can be simplified to:

($extracted,$remainder) = extract_delimited($text, "'");

extract_delimited takes up to four scalars (the input text, the delimiters, a prefix pattern to be skipped, and any escape characters) and extracts the initial substring of the text that is appropriately delimited. If the delimiter string has multiple characters, the first one encountered in the text is taken to delimit the substring. The third argument specifies a prefix pattern that is to be skipped (but must be present!) before the substring is extracted. The final argument specifies the escape character to be used for each delimiter.

All arguments are optional. If the escape characters are not specified, every delimiter is escaped with a backslash (\). If the prefix is not specified, the pattern '\s*' - optional whitespace - is used. If the delimiter set is also not specified, the set /["'`]/ is used. If the text to be processed is not specified either, $_ is used.

In list context, extract_delimited returns a array of three elements, the extracted substring (including the surrounding delimiters), the remainder of the text, and the skipped prefix (if any). If a suitable delimited substring is not found, the first element of the array is the empty string, the second is the complete original text, and the prefix returned in the third element is an empty string.

In a scalar context, just the extracted substring is returned. In a void context, the extracted substring (and any prefix) are simply removed from the beginning of the first argument.

Examples:

# Remove a single-quoted substring from the very beginning of $text:
$substring = extract_delimited($text, "'", '');
# Remove a single-quoted Pascalish substring (i.e. one in which
# doubling the quote character escapes it) from the very
# beginning of $text:
$substring = extract_delimited($text, "'", '', "'");
# Extract a single- or double- quoted substring from the
# beginning of $text, optionally after some whitespace
# (note the list context to protect $text from modification):
($substring) = extract_delimited $text, q{"'};
# Delete the substring delimited by the first '/' in $text:
$text = join '', (extract_delimited($text,'/','[^/]*')[2,1];

Note that this last example is not the same as deleting the first quote-like pattern. For instance, if $text contained the string:

Like "extract_delimited", the extract_bracketed function takes up to three optional scalar arguments: a string to extract from, a delimiter specifier, and a prefix pattern. As before, a missing prefix defaults to optional whitespace and a missing text defaults to $_. However, a missing delimiter specifier defaults to '{}()[]<>' (see below).

extract_bracketed extracts a balanced-bracket-delimited substring (using any one (or more) of the user-specified delimiter brackets: '(..)', '{..}', '[..]', or '<..>'). Optionally it will also respect quoted unbalanced brackets (see below).

A "delimiter bracket" is a bracket in list of delimiters passed as extract_bracketed's second argument. Delimiter brackets are specified by giving either the left or right (or both!) versions of the required bracket(s). Note that the order in which two or more delimiter brackets are specified is not significant.

A "balanced-bracket-delimited substring" is a substring bounded by matched brackets, such that any other (left or right) delimiter bracket within the substring is also matched by an opposite (right or left) delimiter bracket at the same level of nesting. Any type of bracket not in the delimiter list is treated as an ordinary character.

In other words, each type of bracket specified as a delimiter must be balanced and correctly nested within the substring, and any other kind of ("non-delimiter") bracket in the substring is ignored.

since both sets of '{..}' brackets are properly nested and evenly balanced. (In a scalar context just the first element of the array would be returned. In a void context, $text would be replaced by an empty string.)

Likewise the call in:

@result = extract_bracketed( $text, '{[' );

would return the same result, since all sets of both types of specified delimiter brackets are correctly nested and balanced.

because the embedded pairs of '(..)'s and '[..]'s are "cross-nested" and the embedded '>' is unbalanced. (In a scalar context, this call would return an empty string. In a void context, $text would be unchanged.)

Note that the embedded single-quotes in the string don't help in this case, since they have not been specified as acceptable delimiters and are therefore treated as non-delimiter characters (and ignored).

However, if a particular species of quote character is included in the delimiter specification, then that type of quote will be correctly handled. for example, if $text is:

$text = '<A HREF=">>>>">link</A>';

then

@result = extract_bracketed( $text, '<">' );

returns:

( '<A HREF=">>>>">', 'link</A>', "" )

as expected. Without the specification of " as an embedded quoter:

@result = extract_bracketed( $text, '<>' );

the result would be:

( '<A HREF=">', '>>>">link</A>', "" )

In addition to the quote delimiters ', ", and `, full Perl quote-like quoting (i.e. q{string}, qq{string}, etc) can be specified by including the letter 'q' as a delimiter. Hence:

On failure, all of these values (except the remaining text) are undef.

In a scalar context, extract_variable returns just the complete substring that matched a variablish expression. undef is returned on failure. In addition, the original input text has the returned substring (and any prefix) removed from it.

In a void context, the input text just has the matched substring (and any specified prefix) removed.

A string specifying a pattern to be matched as the opening tag. If the pattern string is omitted (or undef) then a pattern that matches any standard XML tag is used.

A string specifying a pattern to be matched at the closing tag. If the pattern string is omitted (or undef) then the closing tag is constructed by inserting a / after any leading bracket characters in the actual opening tag that was matched (not the pattern that matched the tag). For example, if the opening tag pattern is specified as '{{\w+}}' and actually matched the opening tag "{{DATA}}", then the constructed closing tag would be "{{/DATA}}".

A string specifying a pattern to be matched as a prefix (which is to be skipped). If omitted, optional whitespace is skipped.

The fail option indicates the action to be taken if a matching end tag is not encountered (i.e. before the end of the string or some reject pattern matches). By default, a failure to match a closing tag causes extract_tagged to immediately fail.

However, if the string value associated with <reject> is "MAX", then extract_tagged returns the complete text up to the point of failure. If the string is "PARA", extract_tagged returns only the first paragraph after the tag (up to the first line that is either empty or contains only whitespace characters). If the string is "", the the default behaviour (i.e. failure) is reinstated.

For example, suppose the start tag "/para" introduces a paragraph, which then continues until the next "/endpara" tag or until another "/para" tag is encountered:

On failure, all of these values (except the remaining text) are undef.

In a scalar context, extract_tagged returns just the complete substring that matched a tagged text (including the start and end tags). undef is returned on failure. In addition, the original input text has the returned substring (and any prefix) removed from it.

In a void context, the input text just has the matched substring (and any specified prefix) removed.

gen_extract_tagged generates a new anonymous subroutine which extracts text between (balanced) specified tags. In other words, it generates a function identical in function to extract_tagged.

The difference between extract_tagged and the anonymous subroutines generated by gen_extract_tagged, is that those generated subroutines:

do not have to reparse tag specification or parsing options every time they are called (whereas extract_tagged has to effectively rebuild its tag parser on every call);

make use of the new qr// construct to pre-compile the regexes they use (whereas extract_tagged uses standard string variable interpolation to create tag-matching patterns).

The subroutine takes up to four optional arguments (the same set as extract_tagged except for the string to be processed). It returns a reference to a subroutine which in turn takes a single argument (the text to be extracted from).

In other words, the implementation of extract_tagged is exactly equivalent to:

(although extract_tagged is not currently implemented that way, in order to preserve pre-5.005 compatibility).

Using gen_extract_tagged to create extraction functions for specific tags is a good idea if those functions are going to be called more than once, since their performance is typically twice as good as the more general-purpose extract_tagged.

extract_quotelike attempts to recognize, extract, and segment any one of the various Perl quotes and quotelike operators (see perlop(3)) Nested backslashed delimiters, embedded balanced bracket delimiters (for the quotelike operators), and trailing modifiers are all caught. For example, in:

Note too that, when using the /x modifier on a regex, any comment containing the current pattern delimiter will cause the regex to be immediately terminated. In other words:

'm /
(?i) # CASE INSENSITIVE
[a-z_] # LEADING ALPHABETIC/UNDERSCORE
[a-z0-9]* # FOLLOWED BY ANY NUMBER OF ALPHANUMERICS
/x'

will be extracted as if it were:

'm /
(?i) # CASE INSENSITIVE
[a-z_] # LEADING ALPHABETIC/'

This behaviour is identical to that of the actual compiler.

extract_quotelike takes two arguments: the text to be processed and a prefix to be matched at the very beginning of the text. If no prefix is specified, optional whitespace is the default. If no text is given, $_ is used.

In a list context, an array of 11 elements is returned. The elements are:

For each of the fields marked "(if any)" the default value on success is an empty string. On failure, all of these values (except the remaining text) are undef.

In a scalar context, extract_quotelike returns just the complete substring that matched a quotelike operation (or undef on failure). In a scalar or void context, the input text has the same substring (and any specified prefix) removed.

extract_quotelike can successfully extract "here documents" from an input string, but with an important caveat in list contexts.

Unlike other types of quote-like literals, a here document is rarely a contiguous substring. For example, a typical piece of code using here document might look like this:

<<'EOMSG' || die;
This is the message.
EOMSG
exit;

Given this as an input string in a scalar context, extract_quotelike would correctly return the string "<<'EOMSG'\nThis is the message.\nEOMSG", leaving the string " || die;\nexit;" in the original variable. In other words, the two separate pieces of the here document are successfully extracted and concatenated.

"" (a here document has no second left delimiter, second text, second right delimiter, or trailing modifiers).

However, the matching position of the input variable would be set to "exit;" (i.e. after the closing delimiter of the here document), which would cause the earlier " || die;\nexit;" to be skipped in any sequence of code fragment extractions.

To avoid this problem, when it encounters a here document whilst extracting from a modifiable string, extract_quotelike silently rearranges the string to an equivalent piece of Perl:

<<'EOMSG'
This is the message.
EOMSG
|| die;
exit;

in which the here document is contiguous. It still leaves the matching position after the here document, but now the rest of the line on which the here document starts is not skipped.

To prevent <extract_quotelike> from mucking about with the input in this way (this is the only case where a list-context extract_quotelike does so), you can pass the input variable as an interpolated literal:

extract_codeblock attempts to recognize and extract a balanced bracket delimited substring that may contain unbalanced brackets inside Perl quotes or quotelike operations. That is, extract_codeblock is like a combination of "extract_bracketed" and "extract_quotelike".

extract_codeblock takes the same initial three parameters as extract_bracketed: a text to process, a set of delimiter brackets to look for, and a prefix to match first. It also takes an optional fourth parameter, which allows the outermost delimiter brackets to be specified separately (see below).

Omitting the first argument (input text) means process $_ instead. Omitting the second argument (delimiter brackets) indicates that only '{' is to be used. Omitting the third argument (prefix argument) implies optional whitespace at the start. Omitting the fourth argument (outermost delimiter brackets) indicates that the value of the second argument is to be used for the outermost delimiters.

Once the prefix an dthe outermost opening delimiter bracket have been recognized, code blocks are extracted by stepping through the input text and trying the following alternatives in sequence:

Try and match a closing delimiter bracket. If the bracket was the same species as the last opening bracket, return the substring to that point. If the bracket was mismatched, return an error.

Try to match a quote or quotelike operator. If found, call extract_quotelike to eat it. If extract_quotelike fails, return the error it returned. Otherwise go back to step 1.

Try to match an opening delimiter bracket. If found, call extract_codeblock recursively to eat the embedded block. If the recursive call fails, return an error. Otherwise, go back to step 1.

Unconditionally match a bareword or any other single character, and then go back to step 1.

The ability to specify a different outermost delimiter bracket is useful in some circumstances. For example, in the Parse::RecDescent module, parser actions which are to be performed only on a successful parse are specified using a <defer:...> directive. For example:

sentence: subject verb object
<defer: {$::theVerb = $item{verb}} >

Parse::RecDescent uses extract_codeblock($text, '{}<>') to extract the code within the <defer:...> directive, but there's a problem.

A deferred action like this:

<defer: {if ($count>10) {$count--}} >

will be incorrectly parsed as:

<defer: {if ($count>

because the "less than" operator is interpreted as a closing delimiter.

But, by extracting the directive using extract_codeblock($text, '{}', undef, '<>') the '>' character is only treated as a delimited at the outermost level of the code block, so the directive is parsed correctly.

The extract_multiple subroutine takes a string to be processed and a list of extractors (subroutines or regular expressions) to apply to that string.

In an array context extract_multiple returns an array of substrings of the original string, as extracted by the specified extractors. In a scalar context, extract_multiple returns the first substring successfully extracted from the original string. In both scalar and void contexts the original string has the first successfully extracted substring removed from it. In all contexts extract_multiple starts at the current pos of the string, and sets that pos appropriately after it matches.

Hence, the aim of of a call to extract_multiple in a list context is to split the processed string into as many non-overlapping fields as possible, by repeatedly applying each of the specified extractors to the remainder of the string. Thus extract_multiple is a generalized form of Perl's split subroutine.

The subroutine takes up to four optional arguments:

A string to be processed ($_ if the string is omitted or undef)

A reference to a list of subroutine references and/or qr// objects and/or literal strings and/or hash references, specifying the extractors to be used to split the string. If this argument is omitted (or undef) the list:

An number specifying the maximum number of fields to return. If this argument is omitted (or undef), split continues as long as possible.

If the third argument is N, then extraction continues until N fields have been successfully extracted, or until the string has been completely processed.

Note that in scalar and void contexts the value of this argument is automatically reset to 1 (under -w, a warning is issued if the argument has to be reset).

A value indicating whether unmatched substrings (see below) within the text should be skipped or returned as fields. If the value is true, such substrings are skipped. Otherwise, they are returned.

The extraction process works by applying each extractor in sequence to the text string.

If the extractor is a subroutine it is called in a list context and is expected to return a list of a single element, namely the extracted text. It may optionally also return two further arguments: a string representing the text left after extraction (like $' for a pattern match), and a string representing any prefix skipped before the extraction (like $` in a pattern match). Note that this is designed to facilitate the use of other Text::Balanced subroutines with extract_multiple. Note too that the value returned by an extractor subroutine need not bear any relationship to the corresponding substring of the original text (see examples below).

If the extractor is a precompiled regular expression or a string, it is matched against the text in a scalar context with a leading '\G' and the gc modifiers enabled. The extracted value is either $1 if that variable is defined after the match, or else the complete match (i.e. $&).

If the extractor is a hash reference, it must contain exactly one element. The value of that element is one of the above extractor types (subroutine reference, regular expression, or string). The key of that element is the name of a class into which the successful return value of the extractor will be blessed.

If an extractor returns a defined value, that value is immediately treated as the next extracted field and pushed onto the list of fields. If the extractor was specified in a hash reference, the field is also blessed into the appropriate class,

If the extractor fails to match (in the case of a regex extractor), or returns an empty list or an undefined value (in the case of a subroutine extractor), it is assumed to have failed to extract. If none of the extractor subroutines succeeds, then one character is extracted from the start of the text and the extraction subroutines reapplied. Characters which are thus removed are accumulated and eventually become the next field (unless the fourth argument is true, in which case they are discarded).

For example, the following extracts substrings that are valid Perl variables:

This example separates a text into fields which are quote delimited, curly bracketed, and anything else. The delimited and bracketed parts are also blessed to identify them (the "anything else" is unblessed):

The list in the second argument means: "Try and extract a ' or " delimited string, otherwise extract anything up to a comma...". The undef third argument means: "...as many times as possible...", and the true value in the fourth argument means "...discarding anything else that appears (i.e. the commas)".

If you wanted the commas preserved as separate fields (i.e. like split does if your split pattern has capturing parentheses), you would just make the last parameter undefined (or remove it).

The gen_delimited_pat subroutine takes a single (string) argument and > builds a Friedl-style optimized regex that matches a string delimited by any one of the characters in the single argument. For example:

gen_delimited_pat(q{'"})

returns the regex:

(?:\"(?:\\\"|(?!\").)*\"|\'(?:\\\'|(?!\').)*\')

Note that the specified delimiters are automatically quotemeta'd.

A typical use of gen_delimited_pat would be to build special purpose tags for extract_tagged. For example, to properly ignore "empty" XML elements (which might contain quoted strings):

gen_delimited_pat may also be called with an optional second argument, which specifies the "escape" character(s) to be used for each delimiter. For example to match a Pascal-style string (where ' is the delimiter and '' is a literal ' within the string):

gen_delimited_pat(q{'},q{'});

Different escape characters can be specified for different delimiters. For example, to specify that '/' is the escape for single quotes and '%' is the escape for double quotes:

gen_delimited_pat(q{'"},q{/%});

If more delimiters than escape chars are specified, the last escape char is used for the remaining delimiters. If no escape char is specified for a given specified delimiter, '\' is used.

In a list context, all the functions return (undef,$original_text) on failure. In a scalar context, failure is indicated by returning undef (in this case the input text is not modified in any way).

In addition, on failure in any context, the $@ variable is set. Accessing $@->{error} returns one of the error diagnostics listed below. Accessing $@->{pos} returns the offset into the original string at which the error was detected (although not necessarily where it occurred!) Printing $@ directly produces the error message, with the offset appended. On success, the $@ variable is guaranteed to be undef.

extract_bracketed, extract_quotelike or extract_codeblock found a valid bracket delimiter, but it was the wrong species. This usually indicates a nesting error, but may indicate incorrect quoting or escaping.

extract_tagged matched the specified opening tag and tried to modify the matched text to produce a matching closing tag (because none was specified). It failed to generate the closing tag, almost certainly because the opening tag did not start with a bracket of some kind.